Thesis Title: Subtitle

Introduction

Facebook is unique amongst online environments as it is concerned with mapping users’ offline social relationships like the friendships discussed in the previous chapter. The friendships described by participants in this research were stable, persistent and maintained through offline interaction. As such, it links online self-presentation to a locatable offline person. The ability to link self-presentation to a body, a person and an offline existence means that the self presented on Facebook can be falsified against offline patterns of behaviour. Until recently the internet was a largely anonymous space. There were few ways to even attempt to verify someone’s identity claims to ascertain ‘who they really were’. Unlike many other online environments, Facebook began with an emphasis on real names linked, and in effect verified by offline institution. For the first few years of operation Facebook users had to have a verifiable email at a university. This approach is radically different to the seemingly fluid and commitment-free modes of self-presentation that had previously dominated the internet.

This self-presentation on Facebook is a unique site of enquiry as it is very much grounded in the offline world. In examining self-presentation on Facebook this chapter begins with a review of various theories of the self and how these theories have influenced previous scholarship regarding self-presentation online. From this I argue that self-presentation on Facebook is influenced by mainstream social structures, social values and relationships. By doing this, I further argue that the representation of the self on Facebook is edited, not through what is revealed, but rather what is concealed.

Representations of the self on Facebook are typically reticent as opposed to expressive. However, as Facebook is part of the participants’ daily lives, I also examine the intersection of conscious and unconscious self-presentation. This intersection was
important to participants as they held it was possible to locate some type of authentic self in other’s self-presentation on Facebook over time. In constructing this impression participants noted that incongruent behaviours were one way to effectively assess the authenticity of other people’s self-presentation.